The aether rail was diverted at the very last switch.
Cassian felt it in the tilt of the carriage; the pitch off by less than a degree, but enough for someone like him to notice. The guards didn't react. The man across from him, Garrick, raised an eyebrow. The change was small, but the implications weren't.
They weren't heading to the Black Hatchery.
They were heading somewhere far worse.
Or far better. It all depended on who had ordered the switch.
The car rattled into a dim tunnel carved into the city's belly walls black with old fire and lined with dead signal lights. No signs. No warnings. No official insignia.
After five more minutes of silence, the car hissed to a stop. The cell door slammed open.
Cassian was hauled out by a different set of guards; these ones leaner, faces visible. No armor. Not soldiers. House men.
And standing just beyond the platform was the last man Cassian expected to see.
The Duke of Vale.
His father.
He stood in a charcoal coat lined with frost-wool, a cane in one hand, gloves spotless. His silver hair was swept back as always, though his face had aged beyond the three months since Cassian's sentencing. Not in the body; he still held himself like a man built from blackstone. But in the eyes. They were hollowed slightly. Not with grief. With exhaustion.
"Unshackle him," the Duke said.
The guards hesitated.
"Now."
They obeyed.
Cassian staggered as the collar dropped from his neck and the iron restraints hit the floor with a dull clang. His arms burned, muscles cramping from hours of containment. He didn't fal; but he swayed.
"You should have let me rot," Cassian rasped.
The Duke studied him for a long moment. "You look like a shadow of yourself."
Cassian smiled through cracked lips. "That's fitting. I am a shadow now. You made sure of it."
The Duke turned and walked into the tunnel. "Follow."
Cassian didn't move.
"Or you can stay here," the Duke added, not turning back. "They'll take you the rest of the way. Black Hatchery's expecting you by dawn."
A pause.
Then Cassian stepped off the platform and into the dark.
They walked in silence through a forgotten maintenance tunnel lit by flickering brass sconces. Water dripped in steady intervals. Cassian's boots splashed through ankle-deep runoff, the stench of oil and mildew heavy in the air.
"Why?" Cassian finally asked. "Why intervene now?"
"I didn't intervene," the Duke replied. "I redirected."
"That's a distinction only you care about."
The Duke stopped at a rusted maintenance door. He opened it with a small brass key, held between two fingers as if it disgusted him. On the other side: stairs. Down.
"There's only one place worse than the Hatchery," the Duke said. "A place with no record. No law. No redemption."
He looked Cassian dead in the eye.
"I sent you there."
Cassian laughed once; bitter, low. "So this is mercy?"
"No. This is containment."
The words landed with all the weight of a falling tower.
"You're too dangerous for the Hatchery," the Duke continued, descending. "They'd study you. Extract you. Use what you know."
Cassian followed. "And you won't?"
"I already have."
The stairs opened into a circular chamber: a loading dock half-submerged in steam, where a makeshift elevator hung from chain pulleys over a black shaft. Beyond it, a stone arch led into the fringes of the Border Slums.
The slums of Aurelith were more than poor; they were erased. The official city maps ended at the Arcline Wall. Everything past that was a patchwork of forgotten warrens, rebel enclaves, failed experiments, and collapsed industry. No law ruled there. Only rust and survival.
"Down there," the Duke said, "no one cares about bloodlines. Only what you can build or destroy."
"And what do you think I'll do?" Cassian asked.
"I think," the Duke said slowly, "you'll try to survive."
He reached into his coat and handed Cassian something small and sharp.
A screwdriver.
It was old iron, not brass and the handle was worn to the grain.
"You gave me this when I was eight," Cassian murmured.
"You used it to dismantle a noble's automaton in the middle of a gala," the Duke said. "Nearly started a war."
"You smiled."
"I was drunk."
Cassian took it.
The Duke pulled the chain lever, and the elevator descended a few feet before locking into place.
"There's a workshop buried three levels below the old Aether Engine on Section K," the Duke said. "Your mother used to keep it. No one goes there now. You'll find scraps. Tools. Nothing more."
He turned away.
"Why are you helping me?" Cassian asked, his voice suddenly raw.
The Duke paused.
"Because part of me believes you were innocent," he said. "And the other part…"
He looked back at his son.
"...wants to see what you become when no one is holding the leash."
It took less than an hour for the slums to cut him open.
Cassian was walking through the rusted remains of a pipe corridor, screwdriver tucked into his boot, when he was jumped. Three of them. Sootborn teens with razors and glass-shard knives. One had an old revolver with half a cylinder.
Cassian didn't hesitate.
He jammed the screwdriver into the first one's leg, twisted, ducked a punch, drove his knee into the second's ribs, and disarmed the third before the trigger clicked.
He left them breathing.
Barely.
They'd be back. But not tonight.
By the time he reached the old engine housing, his legs were coated in grime and his mind was already drawing blueprints; mental maps of every shortcut, every weak wall, every thermal pulse through the crumbling pipes.
He cracked the rusted hatch.
Inside was ruin.
A half-buried workshop, clearly untouched in over a decade. Dust like ash on everything. Broken coil arrays. A shattered spellglass monitor. Crates of stripped parts. The bones of old machines.
It was perfect.
Cassian stepped inside, closed the hatch, and finally—finally—breathed.
The silence felt like drowning. And then rebirth.
He looked around the dark, dead space.
And smiled.
He still had his mind. His hands. His name was ash but ash could be forged.